Adapting and Adjusting in Absence of the Husbands: Stories of Left-behind Wives

Families have to make adjustments in their lifestyles and shoulder greater responsibilities as a consequence of the migration of a male member. Hence, an attempt has been made in this paper to study the way the left-behind wives adapt and adjust in absence of their husbands in the villages. Primary data has been collected during January-March 2010 by undertaking a complete house listing of six villages of Pindra block of Varanasi, a district in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. This research found that the wives left behind reside mostly with their in-laws, with some moving from non-nuclear households to nuclear households. Moreover, parents-in-law have more of an influence on the lives of the wives left behind than parents do, providing more (and different types of) support for them in the absence of their husbands.